Author: Richard Newby

Overview: Picking up five years after Curse of Chucky, the titular killer doll tracks Nica down to a mental asylum where he continues his assault of terror, while revealing a larger scheme that brings his original target, Andy, back into the fray. Wanna Play?: It almost goes without saying that by the time the seventh entry of a horror franchise comes around, expectations are pretty low and justly so. The examples are numerous. The same could be said of sixth entries as well. Yet, Don Mancini bucked the trend with 2013’s Curse of Chucky, which broke the curse of...

Here’s the latest trailer for Zack Snyder’s Justice League! Hot damn! Justice League is really shaping up to be something spectacular. I got chills when Superman’s theme from Man of Steel started playing in Lois’s dream, and I couldn’t help but grin at the banter between the team. After all the reshoots, and rumors, and whatnot, it’s clear that Justice League remains very much a Zack Snyder film, as the official reports always suggested. The lighter tone was expected and promised before BvS, and this trailer delivers on that promise, while still showing the gravity and depth of consequence...

Here’s our first look at Steven S. DeKnight’s sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, Pacific Rim: Uprising! I had my doubts. Could you blame me? It’s no easy feat to follow in Guillermo del Toro’s footsteps, but DeKnight looks like he may acheive just that. Pacific Rim: Uprising looks like a complete blast! While it may lack some of Guillermo’s aesthetics, you can still see his influence heavily on this film. And Uprsing may offer an improvement by having what seems to be most of the film’s central battles in daylight to better showcase the kaiju....

Following the release of Blade Runner: Nowhere to Run, Denis Villeneuve swtiches things up with the final short film installment leading to his film Blade Runner 2049. This time round he brought in famed anime director Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop) for Blade Runner: Black Out 2022. Set just three years after the original film, Black Out explores the ramifications of a massive EMP detonation that sends the already dark world of Blade Runner into an even darker place. This really makes us want to see an Animatrix style release of different animated stories set within the Blade Runner universe. Blade Runner...

Neill Blomkamp continues to make cool shorts his way through his venture, Oats Studios. We posted his first two shorts from Oats Studios earlier this year, and now we have another to share: ADAM: The Mirror. The film serves as a sequel to a short he released last year, ADAM: Chapter 1. Both shorts were filmed using creation software Unity Technologies. A third installment, ADAM: The Prophet is expected to be released online later this year. Watch both ADAM: Chapter 1 and ADAM: The Mirror below! You can find out more about Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios and how to support it here: http://oatsstudios.com/ Featured...

The last month has largely consisted of talking about Stephen King, about his particular brand of horror and his insights into the human spirit. There was no preventing some of that from bleeding over into this consideration of Clive Barker, who King once described as the future of horror. Well the future is now here, and this conclusion has come to the forefront: if Stephen King’s works are about facing the dark with the companionship of others and ultimately finding the light again, then Barker’s works are about staring into and being consumed by the dark…forever and entirely alone....

Do you remember the first time you fell in love with monsters? I do. It was somewhere in the midst of Frankenstein, Goosebumps, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and War of the Colossal Beast that I came to love them. I researched them. I wrote about them. I drew them on every blank piece of paper I could find and turned many a school art project into a monstrous vision of blood and blisters, much to the disgust of my teachers. I was separated from my peers for monsters. I went to detention for monsters. My parents were called...

When we think about horror movies, most often we focus on the lighting, the acting, the effects, and the shocking reveal. But none of these elements would be nearly as effective without the use of music. Whether it be diegetic or non-diegetic, the music featured in horror movies has the ability to masterfully manipulate our emotions, making even the most sub-par elements of horror effective in a way they never would be without it. In a two-part list, we’ll be continuing our conversation of horror music by looking at more best horror movie scores and the best uses of...

Here’s the first trailer for Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina) adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. VanderMeer’s novel, which we discussed last year, is one of the most haunting novels I’ve read in a long while. Centering on a group of women tasked with exploring ecological anomaly known as Area X, Annihilation is an existential sci-fi, horror journey that re-shapes these women’s knowledge of themselves and the world that surrounds them. With a cast consisting of Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriiguez, and Oscar Isaac, Annihilation will certainly be one of the most well-acted films to hit next...

There’s magic in growing up. It’s a theme that forms the catalyst for many of Stephen King’s stories. The shifting of innocence into maturity, the awakening of self and awareness of all the possibilities of the future, and triumph over fear—the most powerful magic of all—are an element of the alchemy of childhood. In King’s world it is children who are the strongest, and adults often triumph by discovering their inner child…or meet terrible ends in their failure to do so. But there’s a space in between. A gap between kids like Danny Torrance, Jake Chambers, Mark Petrie, The...

Here’s the first full trailer for Marvel’s The Punisher! First off, this trailer gets major props for the use of Metallica’s “One.” And secondly, Jon Bernthal’s take on Frank Castle as a rage animal is really something to behold. The series, delving into government conspiracies and covert operations looks like it’ll pull significantly from Garth Ennis’ Punisher MAX run, which will certainly differenate its arc from the previous Punisher films. With Hannibal and Narcos Producer and writer, Steve Lightfoot as showrunner, there’s a high that The Punisher will be one of Marvel/Netflix’s best collaborations. Netfix is teasing out the...

Following the release of short film Nexus: 2036, Luke Scott brings us the second of three short Blade Runner stories, Nowhere to Run, which further expands the world of Blade Runner and sets up the events of Denis Villeneuve’s sequel. This short introduces us to Dave Bautista’s “rogue skin-job” Sapper, in the year 2048, and sets up the future confrontation between him and Ryan Gosling’s K. Blade Runner 2049 will be released on October 6th, 2017. Featured Image: Warner...

Here’s our first look at Roar Uthaug’s (The Wave) Tomb Raider Reboot! While the trailer consists mostly of action beats, it does strike the right tone and look for Tomb Raider. Based on Square Enix’s rebooted game series, Tomb Raider looks like it’s going to draw heavily from the 2013 game’s action beats and set pieces, with a few surprises thrown in. Alicia Vikander is perfectly cast as Lara Croft, and hopefully the Oscar winner can set a new trend for video game movies. All signs point to Tomb Raider being a blast, and putting the action heroine back...

**Spoilers for mother!”** Before the premiere of mother! at the Toronto Film Festival, Darren Aronofsky handed out prayer cards, entitled “mother’s prayer,” a variation on the Lord’s Prayer. It was a move that was deemed by many to be a stunt, a gimmicky attempt to stir up buzz. And perhaps it was a stunt in part. But, Aronofsky has always been passing out prayers, attempts to find, understand, and interpret the will and whims of God, or perfection, through his films. It’s been done through numbers (Pi), through the unsustainable high (Requiem for a Dream), the quest for immortality...

Jennifer Lawrence re-teams with Francis Lawrence for the espionage thriller, Red Sparrow, based on the novel by Jason Matthews. The teaser immediately draws to mind Marvel’s Black Widow, but if Marvel Studios won’t cash in on that idea, other studios will clearly make their own version, albeit R-rated. Francis Lawrence has always displayed a keen visual style, and the the cold world of espionage fits him well, while also providing Jennifer Lawrence an oppurtunity to tackle a specific kind of character, defined by tropes, and make it her own. While the teaser doesn’t give away too much in terms of...